December 23, 2015 For such a unapologetically secular country, Germany does Christmas like nobody’s business. Here, Christmas is not just a day in December preceded by weeks of materialism and bad music on the radio, but rather a real season, full of ritual and traditions that transcend packed department stores and Santa kitsch imported from America.

Christmas day (the 24th in Germany, not the 25th) is the final tiny door on the advent calendar, the last mug of Glühwein, a simple plate of potato salad and sausage because the lady of the house doesn’t have to cook. Weihnachten, halt.

The Market in Ingelheim, in the ruins of an 800-year-old church.

At the center of Christmas in Germany are the Weihnachtsmärkte, the Christmas Markets, opened all day every day starting the beginning of Advent. Almost every town has one, small or large–a few stands in the local Dorf, an entire village in Frankfurt or Nürnberg.

The Weihnachtsmärkte are not universally loved. Many Germans have to get a certain amount of complaining/general grumping out of their systems on the topic: It’s a lot of standing around in the cold…too commercialized nowadays…cheap alcohol and sugar. But somehow, everyone ends up in front of their favorite Glühwein stand anyway, tipsy and eating Bratwurst and generally having a marvelous time. And not just once. The translation company where I work had not one but two Christmas get-togethers at the Mainzer Weihnachtsmarkt within the space of two weeks.

Glühwein–hot mulled wine drunk from mugs–stands at the center of Weihnachtsmarkt cuisine.

Gotland sheep grazing near a fishing village on Fårö, a tiny island off the northern coast of Gotland.

September 20, 2015 Most people come to Europe for the high culture, or the art museums, or the ancient buildings, or the cuisine. My parents, on the other hand, come to Europe for the sake of a tiny, wind-swept island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Or, more specifically, for one particular breed of sheep on that island. Gotlands–small and hardy, with a lustrous silver fleece prized for both pelts and yarn–are inseparable from the natural landscape of the island, a beloved part of Sweden’s national heritage. Everyone, it seems, raises sheep.

Gotlands are incredibly rare in America, and my family owns one of the only farms with the breed on the East coast. My parents, and my mother in particular, were thrilled for the chance to travel to the island itself–a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn and look behind the scenes and ask questions that only Gotland farmers know the answers to.

The flag of Gotland Island.

The sheep graze right down to the edge of the Baltic Sea.

And so we spent a long weekend on Gotland traveling from farm to farm, visiting shops and talking to people. I am, I admit, usually the fine-cuisine-and-art-museum type, but I surprised myself by loving the entire trip–not, as in the case of my parents, because of all the technical sheep-talk that went on, but because of the way we travelled. This was no superficial tourist trip: stay three nights in a youth hostel, hit the big sights, and never speak with a local. Instead, the four days on Gotland were gritty, real, in-your-face–dialogue after dialogue with the people who make their living there, raising sheep in thatched-roofed barns on 1,200-year-old farmsteads. This is how I want to travel.

Thanks to local advice, we strayed pretty far from the beaten path. We attended, for instance, the island’s annual ram auction–dozens of Gotland’s most gorgeous animals selling to buyers from across Sweden, prices up to 8,000 dollars. I mean, how many of your average summer visitors can boast of that?! “It’s like Christmas for sheep people!!” one shepherd told us with utmost enthusiasm, wrist-deep in the fleece of one particularly handsome ram. You don’t get that every day.

Ram auction ahead!

Before the start of the ram auction, potential buyers have the chance to examine the sheep and talk to the shepherds.

Our personal favorite, a perfect example of the traits of the Gotland breed.

The sheep are ranked in multiple categories (body composition, color, wool luster, curl depth, etc.), and the results are printed in a booklet handed out to all potential buyers. The scores are consulted and the animals carefully examined before the bidding begins.

The official scoring booklet, published by the Gotland Sheep Association.

The whole event was a family affair–much laughter and greeting of old friends, a communal lunch, and dozens of white-blond children. Older shepherds we talked to expressed delight that so many young families on the island are interested in raising sheep.

In the end, the best part of the trip were the people themselves: the farmers, the hand workers, the proud owners of small businesses that, ultimately, weren’t all that different from those in Vermont. It seems that farmers all over the world speak the same language–a language that I find myself eternally drawn back to, even after falling in love with the European metropolis. Farming people are somehow real, connected to land and tradition in a way that makes city life seem sometimes overblown and overcomplicated.

The hospitality of the Gotlanders we met was staggering. It began at the tiny airport in Visby, where an online knitter-friend of my mother’s surprised us with a home-cooked lunch, a map of the island, and thirty minutes of helpful advice. On every farm we visited, the shepherds opened their barns, stores, and studios to us, overcoming sometimes-limited English to answer hundreds of our questions and to ask their own. Family secrets were spilled and tall tales were told, and a whole lot of very technical sheep discussion took place that went right over my head.

A small wool mill that spins yarn for many of the farms on the island.

The owner Eva talks to my mother about evaluating fleeces.

The studio at the farm Lamm och Bi, where shepherdess Annette sews fleece vests for boutiques in Visby.

Annette and Dan, the owners of Lamm och Bi, standing in front of shelves of their products in the farm store. The two of them care for some 600 sheep (without outside help!!), making them one of the largest Gotland farms in the world.

Sheep pelts displayed at Sindarve Farm.

At Sigsarve Lamm Farm, shepherd Curre went out in the field and brought back a sample of different types of grass so we could see what Gotland farmers feed their sheep.

Besides raising sheep, Curre also grows and preserves several types of ancient grains. After we arrived, he rushed back to the farmhouse to bring us fresh crackers made with spelt and served with sour-milk cheese.

Curre and his wife Lotte. “She do all the thinking! I just fix the fence!” he said, at which point my father decided they were secretly brothers.

Curre and Lotte talked with us for nearly three hours over lunch and coffee. Crazy sheep stories were swapped and hilarity ensued.

Most of the farms we visited were run by a husband-wife team, usually entirely without outside help. Everyone we talked to loved what they were doing, despite the work and the dirt and the isolation of living on a tiny island in the Balticum. “Gotland sheeps are fantastic animals,” we heard again and again. And because we also had Gotland sheeps, and because we were speaking the language, we were automatically a part of their inner sanctum, welcomed with open arms by people we had never seen before in our lives.

In the end, Curre put it best. “You know, we have the big problem today with the refugees–many Swedes say, they come in here, they take our jobs, they are so different. But I say, you have the cultures, religions–but underneath, the people are all the same. You just have to find something, some–what is the word?–connection, and you are all the same. The connection bring people together. Just like having sheeps,” he concluded, looking out into the pasture, squinting into the sun, real pride in his voice. “Sheeps bring people together, too. And that’s a real gud thing. Real gud.”

September 12, 2015 I’m back in Mainz for a bit of time, before the travels start again in the few weeks before my second year at the University. Being away–it makes me realize how much Mainz has become home to me in the past twelve months. “You’ll be back in America in a year! You’re going home soon!” my dear parents say. But Germany is home now, too. When I get off at the sketchy Mainz train station, there are the same feelings of relief and general wellbeing I have when we take the exit off the long green highway headed into Vermont. Can you have more than one Heimat?

In the end, what makes Mainz feel the most like home is not the flashy tourist parts, all prettified and spiffed-up for an international paying public. The Augustinerstraße on a Saturday afternoon, with tour groups from Japan and selfie-taking couples from the cruise ship docked on the Rhine–all very picturesque, but somehow slightly less than authentic. I’d rather have the Augustinerstraße on a Monday morning, full of trucks making deliveries to the cafés and bike riders on their way to work, and the smell of hot bread from the bakeries.

The outer courtyard.

The tiny winery in the New City is another spot that makes Mainz, for me, into Home. Owned by Marcus Landenberger and family, it opens for wine tasting for friends-of-friends-of-friends every Friday evening, rain or shine. I found out about it during my first weeks in Mainz (thanks, Max!), and have been a regular attendee ever since. Marcus opens up his tiny courtyard to guests, and serves fresh bread, meat, and cheese along with the wine on the single long table inside. You pay for as much as you think you’ve eaten.

The guests are a mixture of students from the University and Mainz’s older generations, talking in broad dialect and ranting about local politics, the weather, the harvest season. You introduce yourself by your first name and use the informal pronouns, and laugh more than you have laughed for a long time. In the winter, everyone sits closer and wears coats indoors against the cold. If you are lucky, Marcus opens up the wine cellars across the courtyard and the entire group goes down the stone steps and look at the huge dusty barrels of Riesling and Silvaner in the half-light. Come at seven and stay until midnight.

The hand-written wine card.

The wines for sale.

Meat, bread, and cheese–the best of the best of German cuisine.

The spoils.

Gloaming.

As always, I am astounded by the sheer knowledge and love of these people, young and old alike, for the drinking of wine–their wine, from their city, not some import from Italy or France. The wine list at Marcus’ only seldom varies, but everything is reveled in anew each week.

Did you try the 2011 Riesling? It really is exquisite. Perhaps because of the rain we got that year, do you remember that? Of course.

Rock those pink Lederhosen. Tracht–traditional dress, which in Bavaria consists of Lederhosen and Dirndl–is still very much in style.

August 3, 2015 I spent the weekend on my favorite organic farm in Kulmbach, a tiny Dorf in the heart of the Bavarian countryside. We weeded and harvested and chopped and canned and pickled, and then on Friday evening went down to the local Beer Festival.

As I have written before, the part of Germany I am living in is the land of wine–to the South and West, along the banks of the Rhine River. The cities are full of Weinstuben, and in the summer there is some Weinfest or another on almost every corner, with lights strung up in the vineyards and rows of champagne flutes and wine glasses, fancy French pizza and slices of Zwiebelkuchen.

Here in Bavaria, however, the Weinkultur is replaced by Bierkultur: a little more insanity, a little less inhibition, and a lot more of what looks to my mostly-vegetarian eyes like enormous portions of raw meat. No champagne flutes here–you drink from a Maßkrug, a glass mug that holds an entire liter of beer. And you dance, not on the ground in front of the stage like normal people, but on the tables.

A tent full of some 2,000 euphoric, Maß-drinking Germans dancing on picnic tables to Schlager is a sight to see.

Inside the Bierzelt (Beer Tent).

The band interrupted itself every five minutes so that the entire hall could sing the ultimate German drinking song–Ein Prosit, ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit!–mugs in the air, cheers all around.

Germans are not particularly well-known for their party dancing skills, but they have Schunkeln down pat–link hands with the friends or strangers next to you, sway back and forth until somebody falls off the bench or the next Prosit comes around.

Dapper Tracht-wearers.

After the sun went down, I went back to the festival without my camera, and danced on the tables with strangers and sang along to all the Schlager, and also to Sweet Caroline for good measure. Good times never seemed so good, and all that. The pure joie de vivre in the air was absolutely redemptive.

July 5, 2015 Most Americans associate Germany with beer–Pilsner and Weizen, Oktoberfest, etc etc. But I am living in Rheinhessen, the single largest wine-producing area in the country, which means that the Germany I know is the land of wine. Weinkultur–Wine Culture–is definitely a thing.

Here, wine is much more than something you pour at dinner, is about much more than the alcohol content. You don’t just drink wine–you talk about it, you debate and discuss, you admire. You make a trip once a year to your favorite tiny winery somewhere in Flomborn or Büdesheim or Bingen and come back with a trunk full of €600 worth of champagne. You sit every Friday night in the same Weinstube you have been going to since after the Second World war and make speeches about the Riesling for the benefit of the Mädchen from America.

It’s an art form in and of itself, talking about wine, and the amount of knowledge and genuine passion the average Weinstube-goer brings to the discussion is absolutely staggering. It’s like the way my little brother talks about baseball, or the way my piano teacher could compare the voices of Fischer-Dieskau and Wunderlich–the finest of nuances spun out into story, with a whole poetic vocabulary and symbolism to match.

I’m learning, too. After a year, I know what I like–dry Riesling, a good Rosé, and every now and then an Auslese because they taste like whatever the gods were drinking on Homer’s Olympus. But I’m no expert, can’t work out all the tiny differences that transform the drinking and talking about of wine into a sort of creative act.

Yet, anyway.

In Mainz, the opportunities to celebrate, learn about, and, most importantly, to drink wine abound. The city is one of the eight Great Wine Capitals in the world, after all, and people are verdammt proud of it.

At the University of Mainz, for instance, the student-run group Uni Vinum organizes a “Wine Express” once a month for students–€15, a charter bus, an afternoon of wine-tasting at a couple of the hundreds of wineries in the area. Most are small family businesses run by multiple generations, with histories that go back hundreds of years. A wine-tasting includes a tour of the vineyards and a presentation of the wines by a member of the family, with plenty of opportunities to ask questions and peek behind the scenes. For newcomers such as myself, it’s perfect.

The need to diversify–many wineries have a small Gästehaus, or bed-and-breakfast inn, alongside the wine business.

For me, equally as fascinating as the wineries themselves is the chance to be on the other side of agritourism for a change. When I am at home, on the farm and bed and breakfast in in Vermont, I live the family business. There, I am the second generation, the daughter on the family farm who serves simultaneously as actress, tour guide, and seductress of the curious strangers whose money allows us to do what we do. At home, as in Germany, it is all about storytelling. My ancestors purchased the land in 1650, I grew up in these vineyards with my father, we are the only fully organic winery in the area–my parents came from the city and started the business from scratch 30 years ago, I spent every summer in the garden with my mother, we are the only farm with Gotland sheep in New England. A family business is a family business, whether in Germany or America, and the rhetoric is always the same.

A multi generational affair: above, the son (on the right–to the left is Max Lindemann, the force of energy behind Uni Vinum), below, the father.

Storytelling.

And a cute cat, of course. The presence of a small and fluffy animal is guaranteed to increase the buying power of tourists.

Champagne reception in the garden….

Then into the cellars…

…and then a tractor ride up to the top of the vineyards for wine tasting.

About 8 wines in. 🙂

For those who want access to more than one winery at a time, however, there are the dozens of wine festivals taking place in the area at any given moment during the summer. They range from tiny–a few stands at the corner of some vineyard on the Rhine–to immense–the Weinmarkt in Mainz lasts for two weekends and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Last night, for instance, I went to the festival on the Kirchenstück, a small vineyard right outside of downtown Mainz. It was a local affair, almost entirely free of international tourists–no live music, no fancy show, just picnic tables set up between the rows of grape vines and a field turned into a make-shift parking lot. The German couple I was with knew many of the wineries personally.

And it was absolutely gorgeous.

Weinschorle–half wine, half sparkling water–is very popular when the temperatures are in the mid 90s, as they were last night….

A family affair….

The spoils.

Rosé.

When we left it was nearly midnight, and people were still coming in. Lanterns strung up over the road, crates of empty wine bottles stacked behind the stands, children running down between the long rows of grape vines. They were probably going to be there all night.

May 29, 2015 Now that I live in the Altstadt, the Mainzer farmers’ market is only a two minute walk away. And I love it. It’s another connection to my childhood in Vermont–some of my earliest memories are of Saturdays spent at the Randolph market, where my mother sold handmade baskets and my sister and I ate apple cider doughnuts and played with the kittens that some farmer or another was always trying to hand off. Later, after we moved to Grand View Farm, my mother sold yarn and wood-fired pizza on Friday afternoons on the Chelsea commons, and my sister and I read Tolkien and Thomas Mann and babysat our border collies. “I hate farmers’ markets in Vermont,” my brother always said, 16 and way too cool for small-town New England, “There are too many hippie children.” A reference, of course, to the ever-present horde of skin-kneed, androgynous, ice-cream eating, Waldorf-schooled, and thoroughly wild, wonderful offspring of Vermont’s 1960s generation. “Come on!” my sister and I always said, “It wasn’t that long ago that we were all right out there with them.”

The children in Mainz are different–more city-savvy and multi-lingual, and better dressed–and the backdrop is completely different–cobblestones and a 1,000-year-old cathedral instead of a green-grass common and white clapboard church–but the market is, in essence, the same. Farmers are farmers, no matter where in the world one happens to be.

There are lots of nuns in Mainz.

This time of year in Mainz, asparagus and strawberries are in season. It’s rather like rhubarb season in May in Vermont–you rejoice when it comes, gorge yourself for a month, and by the end of it are so sick of the stuff that you don’t have a problem waiting a year until spring rolls around again. Here, there’s an Spargel-und-Erdbeeren (asparagus and strawberries) stand on almost every street corner, it seems, and half the market is devoted to them in some form or another. Try the asparagus chutney and the strawberry jam! Here’s the best wine to pair with asparagus and strawberries! Buy a kilo of each and save five euros!

Needless to say, I have eaten an inordinate amount of asparagus and strawberries in the last month.

And apples. There are always apples.

Below: Moritz, the biggest, fattest, fluffiest rooster I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know. His owner, who has a cool hat and the broadest of Meenzer dialects, is pretty cool, too.

Meat and bread–a very important part of the farmers’ market in Germany! Below, wurst-selfies FTW.

Meeenzer Pesto!

Sauerkraut and pickles!

Also wine.

Die Mainzer Winzer–the wine stands take up the entire end of the market. Also note that these pictures were taken before 10am. Only in Germany….!

In the end, whether in Vermont or Germany, the purpose of a local market is to forge connections between consumers and the land, the food, and the people who grow it. As a popular Vermont bumper sticker says, “Who’s your farmer?” That question is a little harder to answer in urban Germany than it is in backwoods, hippie New England, of course, but I think the market is a good place to start.

Oh rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words “I love you” rolling off my tongue

No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I’ll be sailing

Rod Stewart

It’s almost surreal: two days ago I was drinking chai tea in a cafe across from the Mainzer cathedral, watching the stone turn red in the setting sun and the theater fill up with people. And now I am sitting in front of a fire in a drafty farmhouse in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont, where the air permanently smells like sheep manure and the farmers are just starting to tap the sugar maples. The terms of human existence are different here–dirty rubber boots and vet visits instead of European philosophy and champagne at the opera–but equally as beautiful. And in the end, it’s the life I know best. I was a bare-footed farm girl long before I knew the heady, complicated world of German literature even existed.

Headed home from the airport in Boston over Route 110–one of the prettiest drives in the state and, actually, in the world.

The state is full of Covered Bridges….

Will’s Store in Chelsea, VT, my home town–they make superb homemade ice-cream with a machine that dates back to before the first World War. Also, I saw more flags on the drive home than I saw during 8 months in Germany. America is a patriotic place; Germany is absolutely not.

South Royalton Food Co-op, twenty minutes down the road. We stopped to pick up some bread to go with dinner.

The pictures on the wall are of the farmers who stock the store—Buy Local at its best.

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong.

John Denver

Home at last: the grand view of Grand View Farm.

Moses the fat barn cat. (photo: GVF)

Chore time. (photo: GVF)

Starting seeds in the Greenhouse. Note the snow drifts on the left-hand side–it’s over two meters in places.

The view from my bedroom window.

Wood fires.

I haven’t seen the stars in months. It is good to be home. (photo: Anna)

February 17, 2015 I am fascinated by the Apollo-Dionysus dichotomy–it’s one of the most pervasive themes in German literature, brought to philosophical expression by Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy from 1872. Apollo, he says, is the Greek god of sun and lyre, reason, clarity, self-control, thought, sanity, the Word. Dionysus is his opposite: darkness, sensuality, insanity, debauchery, intoxication, unbounded ecstasy. German literature asks, How to bring the two together? How to find a balance, a Gleichgewicht, a middle road between two extremes? Too much of the one leads to sterility and lifelessness, too much of the other to insanity and dissolution. Look at the works of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann, for instance: so many of their characters fail or succeed, live or die by their ability to bring Apollo and Dionysus together without destroying themselves and others.

The famous Tanz auf der Lu (Dance on Ludwigsstreet). A live band, thousands of costumed revelers of all ages dancing on the streets, from Schillerplatz all the way back to the cathedral.

Karnival–Fastnacht–is the working-out of that dichotomy in German society, on the streets instead of in art. Five days of pure Dionysus–it’s the balance found, the other half of the equation. Most of the time, as the stereotype goes, German society is driven by Apollo: reasonable, orderly, efficient, rigorous. But then there’s Fastnacht, when all that goes out the window. For five days, the whole city goes mad–no holds barred, Dionysus is Joker und Bacchus, and all the rules are broken. It’s what the Greeks experienced during the great national performances of their tragedies: ekstasis, catharsis. The Self as a rational, autonomous element dissolves into the Whole.

And it is not just the students, the young people who would be out partying anyway–it’s everyone. The four-year-old with his hair dyed green screaming “Helau!” at the parade, the 70-year-old couples in the Weinstube in the Old City, singing and beating on the tables. And everyone else: there’s thousands of revelers on the streets at night, dancing and drinking and throwing the wine bottles on the ground instead of in the recycling bin. You see it in the city, too, normally so neat and orderly: the bus schedule is hopelessly screwed up, everything is color, and the streets are covered in streamers and glitter and green glass Jägermeister bottles.

I found it all incredible. This, the presence of Fastnacht in society, is the balance, the Gleichgewicht, which Faust and Gustav Aschenbach and Harry Haller tried and failed, perhaps, to find.

It all reminds me of the famous scene from Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, “Hermine ist in der Hölle”–Hermine is in hell. Harry Haller the Apollonian gives himself over to Dionysus for a night of excess, frenzy, and sweat-soaked dance in the pit of hell. It’s not an entirely untroubling scene, but it is a moment of transcendence, and the Steppenwolf emerges with a sort of redemption.

Ludwigsstreet, before the start of the dance.

I was on the tram headed into the city on Saturday afternoon. It was full to bursting, and the sun had come out for the first time in what felt like weeks. Someone had brought a boom box, and the entire train turned into a party, giddy people jumping and dancing and trying to pour shots of Jägermeister and singing at the top of their lungs:

Eins kann uns keiner nehmen, und das ist die pure Lust am Leben. There is one thing nobody can take from us, and that is the pure love of life.

Of course Fastnacht has problematic aspects–the police presence in the city skyrockets by necessity, and my main concern on the bus on the way home Monday night was not getting barfed on. But moments like the one on the tram transcend.

Kreppel, aka Berliner, aka Jelly Doughnuts. Only available in Mainz during Fastnacht.

Naturally, though, it is not all insanity and merrymaking. Like the theater in Germany, nothing here can ever be merely entertaining. A key element of Fastnacht in Mainz is politics–political commentary, critique, satire. The floats in the big Rosenmontag parade are all of a political nature, some quite scathing. Many of them I didn’t understand fully, since my knowledge of local politics is not exactly up to snuff. But international politics featured as well….

Obama the sitting duck.

Invasion of the Chlorine-Chicken. Lol.

The Rosenmontag parade.

And there it was. Fastnacht in Mainz, in all its Dionysian glory. I was downtown this evening, and the city crews were already at work, sweeping thousands of pounds of glittery trash off the streets and taking down the stages. It was entirely melancholy, actually.

I don’t think I could take more than one carnival a year, but it was very good while it lasted.

13. December, 2014 My first Christmas in Germany; my first Christmas not spent at home; my first Christmas without my family. It’s a strange and rather melancholy season, this.

At the same time, though, it is beautiful here. It’s funny: in German classes in America one learns all about various holidays and traditions in Germany–Karnival, Fasching, Oktoberfest, Silvester, St. Martins Tag–but Christmas is rarely on the list. And yet, only halfway through December, I can say that Christmas in Germany is turning into the richest, most lovely season I have experienced here. Even in a largely secular country, Advent is something to revel in, anticipated for months and welcomed with joy.

At the center of it all are the Weihnachtsmärkte, the Christmas markets, some nearly a thousand years old, found in the squares of every decent-sized town in the country. They are open every day during Advent, and full of lights and music and very good food.

In Mainz, everyone goes to the Weihnachtsmarkt, and not just once–on Sunday afternoons with the family, in between classes, on Friday evenings before hitting the clubs, during intermissions at the theater. Here, removed from major centers like Frankfurt or Nürnberg, it’s not so much of a flashy tourist affair, but rather something more local and grounded. If you want to brush up on your local dialect, it’s the place to be.

In terms of food and drink, Glühwein–wine, red or white, mulled with oranges, cloves, and cinnamon–is at the center of it all. It’s hot, bitter and sweet at the same time, served at the market in tiny ceramic or glass mugs. Up on the university campus, you can buy it for a euro and drink it from a plastic cup in between classes.

When it is freezing and raining, which is always the case in Mainz in December, it is very easy to drink three mugs on a Thursday evening before you really know what you are doing. You sit on a stoop out of the wind and look at the lights and the people, and the air is full of cathedral bells, and the entire world is enchanted.

Below, some of the sights from the Mainzer Weihnachtsmarkt–minus the cobblestones, the church bells, and the smell of hot almonds and orange rind. To get those things, you have to be here.

Lebkuchen–gingerbread, here a specialty of Nürnberg. Often heart-shaped, strung on ribbons, with sappy sayings in icing.

Hand-made wooden ornaments.

Reibekuchen, also known as Kartoffelpuffer, Erdäpfelpuffer, Reiberdatschi, Reibeplätzchen, Dotsch, Kartoffelpfannkuchen, or Kartoffelplätzchen depending on where you are in Germany. It’s a sort of fried potato pancake, served piping hot with applesauce.

Feuerzangenbowle–untranslatable. Basically an open cask of hot mulled wine with rum-soaked, flaming sugar loaves above it on a rack. The burning rum melts the sugar, which drips down into the wine. Impressive, delectable, and extraordinarily unhealthy.

Schneebälle–literally snowballs, a specialty from Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Basically just balls of sweet dough covered in marzipan or sugar and dipped in chocolate.

And of course Glühwein, and countless other variations of hot alcohol–Kirchwein, Kinderpunsch, Glögg, Glümost, Jagertee, and a dozen other regional specialties that I haven’t yet tried. I’ve still got two weeks, though.